Local News

WILSON, N.C. — Representatives of AmerLink are countersuing Carroll County, alleging more than a million dollars in damages caused by interference by the locality in the failed economic development deal.

INDEPENDENCE — Grayson County will go green with the help of $858,000 in greenbacks from the state.
The funding will assist with a $1.2 million courthouse enhancement project that will make the government building a learning lab for advanced “green” technologies.
According to a press release issued Thursday, the courthouse will be upgraded with energy-efficient equipment and technologies, thanks to two grants — $808,000 from the Department of Mines Minerals and Energy and $50,000 from the Virginia Tobacco Commission.

Work is underway at the closed Carico Bridge, off Virginia 94 in Grayson County.
Following a recent pre-construction meeting between the Virginia Department of Transportation and the contractor, R. R. Dawson Bridge Co. of Lexington, Ky., workers began moving in equipment to the bridge site and started preliminary site work, such as grading, clearing and constructing an access road for workers.

INDEPENDENCE — The woman behind a spiritual retreat planned for Grayson County says she was discriminated against and her constitutional rights were violated when the board of supervisors unanimously voted to deny her a special use permit last month.
Laura George, president of the Oracle Institute, had requested the permit to build a spiritual education center on an 11-acre property in the Wilson District. The center would have taught spirituality and ethical environmental practices.

HILLSVILLE — Citizens have until the end of August to sift through Carroll County's 243-page draft comprehensive plan and share their reactions.

Ronald Newman, the Carroll planning official, hoped during a rollout of the draft plan last Thursday that people would take this opportunity to get involved in making the document that looks 20 years into the future.

INDEPENDENCE — The most heated zoning debate in Grayson County this year will be re-visited in 12 months after supervisors voted last week to re-consider an application for a spiritual education center in the western end of the county.
Last month, supervisors denied an application for a special use permit in the Wilson District to build a spiritual education community known as the Oracle Institute.

RICHMOND— An unofficial work group created by state Del. Ward Armstrong of Henry County continues to discuss ways to contain increases in electricity rates.
The group met for a second time June 29, and after several hours of discussion, it may not go the route of proposing radical changes to a 2007 law that established a new regulatory scheme for Virginia's electric utilities.

In a year dominated by a $4 million budget shortfall, state lawmakers still managed to pass roughly 900 bills that took effect on July 1. The measures run the gamut from seat belts to guns to the promotion of offshore drilling to economic development.
Here’s a selection of the highlights:

FANCY GAP — The windmill-raising Thursday on Gary Horton's farm generated lots of interest in the community for the first attempt to make commercial-grade renewable energy in Carroll County.

Dozens of people, including Virginia state Senator Roscoe Reynolds and business developers Dallas Garrett and Bernie Deck, showed up on the farm on the ridge to see what happened with the windmill installation by Red Hill General Store.